Buddy Franklin's footwork now a work of art

By Helen Pitt

Diehard Sydney Swans fans have long felt Lance "Buddy" Franklin's footwork was an art form. Now it is an artwork, by 3D artist Baden Pailthorpe, at an exhibition that opened this week at UTS Gallery.

In an AFL match in August last year, coincidentally one of Franklin's finest, his 10-goal haul helped the Swans (138) thrash Carlton (57) at the SCG.

A video exhibition at UTS Gallery shows the crowd's reaction at an AFL game as a 3D graph. Credit:Steven Siewert

Using anonymous player and crowd data captured during the round 23 game, Pailthorpe has now immortalised the drama and flow of the match in its entirety. He's taken player information from the data-pack devices they wear between their shoulder blades, and turned them into a 3D animation.

He used the x and y co-ordinates from the data to create a sort of sculptural form of each player's game.

Advertisement

Baden Pailthorpe's work came from a pairing with Aaron Coutts, a UTS professor of sports and exercise science, at the Australian Network for Art and Technology.Credit:Steven Siewert

The result is a hypnotic assemblage that makes each player look like a cross between an Avatar-like video game and a military aircraft.

Pailthorpe also uses the crowd data. Through an audio recording of the fans in the dramatic final six minutes of the game, you hear the crowd roar, the umpire's whistle and see the white and red confetti cover the SCG in a blaze of victory.

It's sport meets gaming on a big artistic scale.

The Clanger solo exhibition pairs these statistical trackings of AFL player performance with the emotional intensities of the crowd, moving the game from the field to the virtual plane.

Baden Pailthorpe with one of his artworks based on an AFL match. Credit:Steven Siewert.

Pailthorpe is a postdoctoral fellow at UNSW Art & Design's iCinema Research Centre. He's a Swans supporter, and played AFL at school, but this work came about ​through the Australian Network for Art and Technology's Synapse Artist Residency program last year. ​He was paired with Aaron Coutts, a UTS professor of sports and exercise science, who works with elite athletes. These works are a result of that pairing.

"AFL is such a spatial thing - it really is a poetic thing - it's a performance, kind of like gladiatorial theatre," Pailthorpe said.

Baden Pailthorpe's work shows the performance of AFL players from the Sydney Swans and Carlton.

"I saw AFL as being a culture rich in aesthetics and emotional intensity because there is so much spectacle in it - anyone who has been to a footy game can sense the palpable energy and can feel why it is a quasi-religious experience for many."

The Clanger solo exhibition, bound to be a hit with Swans supporters as well as fans of Pailthorpe's art, runs until June 22.